I very poignant example of the mental fatigue LucenaTDB was talking about. A 1550 blundering K+P vs K! Boy, I hope that won't be me!! I'll do a quick skim through Pandolfini's Endgame Course in the 45 minutes before I go to bed.

Thanks for the tips everyone. I'm off now... will let you know how it goes. :)

I posted my first couple games. Surprisingly, my opponents have made tactical errors... and I've actually been alert enough to catch all of them. :)

http://blog.chess.com/view/my-quotslowestquot-tourney-day-1

Actually, you are lucky your opponent didn't claim a draw. He can pause the clock and tell the arbiter that the game is drawn. The arbiter will most likely check if he knows how to play opposition. This rule is there to make sure that this doesn't happen:

1st player has 30 seconds.

2nd player has 10 minutes.

The game is drawn (like your position). The 1st player knows opposition. The 2nd player declines the draw and starts hunting the 1st player through his time. 

This is something that they want to prevent. The worst penalty for claiming a draw is I believe 2more minutes added to the clock of your opponent. In my example this would not have mattered at all since he allready had 10 more minutes.

sebas4life> Actually, you are lucky your opponent didn't claim a draw. He can pause the clock and tell the arbiter that the game is drawn.

That's not how it works in the United States... it's not enough to know it's a drawn K+P vs K position, you have to actually prove you can draw it. At least, given non-blitz time controls and digital delay clocks, which are what I always play with.

pvmike was attempting to make progress, and he was successful! I actually just watched a player bungle Philidor and lose a drawn R+P vs R ending.

sebas...pvmike was most likely playing in a USCF tournament...here in the States the rules and procedures are slightly different. One cannot just say, "Arbiter, it's a draw" and be automatically granted a draw. Which is a good reminder to always know which rules one is playing under...USCF, FIDE, BCF, another Federation...whatever.

I wasn't trying beat my opponent on time, I just wanted to see how he responded to Ke4 if he played Kf2 I would have offer a draw. He could have claimed a draw under USCF rules, but I think the arbiter should have made him play out the moves up to Kf2.

But know you basic endings by heart, whenever I study endings I always practice with fast time controls because I know in OTB by the ending I'm not going to have time to think just react.

In France, the arbiter would have demanded that the player play "a few extra moves", and if the player with black shows that he actually knows the drawing pattern, he would have been awarded a draw, even if his flag fell.